


Jamais Une Fin

by vaarsuvius



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-09
Updated: 2012-11-09
Packaged: 2017-11-18 07:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/558214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaarsuvius/pseuds/vaarsuvius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re lying in your bed and it’s 3 A.M. on a school night when you remember. You’re lying in the dark tearing up with frustration at the state of your mind, cursing everyone—the doctors, your classmates, your teachers, your parents. Your brother. God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jamais Une Fin

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from the poem Abel et Caïn by Charles Baudelaire, from the line "Race de Caïn, ton supplice / Aura-t-il jamais une fin?" which translates to "Race of Cain, will there ever be / An ending to your punishment?"
> 
> Warnings for choking/asphyxiation and mentions of death and suicide.

“What are you doing now?”

Your brother leans in close over your shoulder, eyes flicking blankly over long strings of computer code.

“Programming,” you answer simply, a tiny smile curling your lips. Programming comes easily to you—your apt mind quickly puzzles out lines of data and code, and it’s not hard to drown yourself in the sea of numbers for hours at a time. It’s a welcome reprieve from the constant drone of stimuli, both external and internal.

Your brother pouts, looking less like a 17-year-old and more like the scrawny slip of a boy you used to walk to school every day. Some things never change. “I know that,” he whines, “But what are you making?”

“A program.”

He pushes you off the chair.

\--

You’re eighteen, holding a box containing all your worldly possessions—a laptop, a spider’s web of cords, and a bottle of prescription-strength painkillers your brother insisted you take with you (it’s cute how he thinks they’ll help). Your new apartment lies empty before you. You think to yourself that you should probably go out and buy a futon today before it gets dark, unless you want to sleep on the floor.

You’ve already memorized the layout of the apartment from when you came here before signing the lease. Front door, kitchenette on the left, living area to the front, bedroom and bathroom to the right. It’s small, but you don’t need much space anyway.

You put your box down on the counter with a dull thud that’s quickly swallowed up by the silence, and it strikes you that you’re on your own now. It’s not a bad thing; you much prefer to be independent. To be honest, you were always on your own.

Your parents? You were the first son, but always second best. The exact meaning has been lost over the years, but they still knew that something was wrong with you, and if they shunned you by accident or on purpose, it doesn’t matter now. You’re marked, and always have been.

Your brother likes you well enough, but you know from experience that trying to build a relationship with him will only end in pain. It’s not worth the warmth it brings. You don’t isolate yourself out of preference. It’s a necessity. Your memories rise up at the thought, pushing out at the backs of your eyes and making you clench your teeth in pain. You force yourself to breathe as you sink to the floor and curse yourself for being so helpless. Relying on others will get you nowhere. You can’t let Him break you. You _won’t_.

And so your first hour in your new apartment is spent paralyzed with agony on the floor. So much for buying a futon.

\--

Your brother lays a comforting hand on your forehead, and you crack an eye open against the pain. His face is shadowed with worry. These migraines have plagued you as long as you can remember, and even now this is the best anyone can do. With his other hand, he holds yours, as if he could siphon away some of the pain himself.

You dig your nails into the back of his hand and bite down on your lip as your head threatens to split in two. Your parents took you out of school for a month, sending you to various doctors around the city at your brother’s insistence. Stripping you bare, the doctors pierced you with their needles, probed at every inch of your body until every part of you, inside and out, was neatly photographed and filed away. They found nothing wrong. Eventually the money ran out, but more importantly, the motivation ran out. Your parents gave up on you (but then, you always knew they would).

Brother never left. He’s the only one who can make you feel a bit better, as you soon find out (God has a sick sense of irony). Well, fuck it. Fuck everyone. You voice your thoughts, and your brother simply shakes his head, leans down, and kisses you on the forehead. He’s gotten used your eccentricities already. You’re not entirely sure whether or not this is a good thing.

\--

You’re almost 12 when you remember.

You’ve been feeling strange for some time now, knowing things you shouldn’t know, that you couldn’t know, and having no idea _how_ you know. It’s gotten you into trouble more than once already and you’re tired of it. You feel like enough of a freak already without this constant stream of deja vu and dissociation. There are times when you feel like you’re not even yourself, or that the face you see in the mirror isn’t your own. It scares you, makes your stomach twist in shame and anxiety. 

If you could just be normal, you think, if you could just be like your little brother, everything would be okay. If you could say anything more than ‘I don’t know’ when the doctors ask you what’s wrong. If you didn’t come up against a wall every time you tried to figure out what’s wrong with your head.

You’re lying in your bed and it’s 3 A.M. on a school night when you remember. You’re lying in the dark tearing up with frustration at the state of your mind, cursing everyone—the doctors, your classmates, your teachers, your parents. Your brother. God.

There’s no warning. Your head explodes in agony and suddenly, instantly, you _know_. You finally know and you’re glad and you’re bitter and relieved and furious all at once, just for a fraction of a second before you pass out.

\--

You’ve never dreamed like normal people do. When you read yourself storybooks (mother and father are always too busy to read to you, and you don’t ask why they have time to read to little brother because you already know), the princes and princesses spend their nights dreaming up happily ever afters that always come true.

Your dreams aren’t like that. From before you can remember, your dreams have only ever been violent. They’re all different, a hazy red mess of starvation (no one would feed you, even the ground withheld its sustenance from you), exposure (no one would open their door to let you in), disease (no one would treat you, not even dare to touch you). Through it all is the feeling that no matter what suffering you endure, you have earned it. Actions you don’t remember condemn you to death.

Your parents couldn't puzzle out why you always woke up sobbing, and for the first few weeks after it started, they comforted you, let you sleep in their bed, told you it was only a dream, that they would never let anything bad happen to you. But it didn't take long for their patience with you to wear thin.

"Nightmares again?" they would ask in tired voices as you held your pillow with trembling hands. "Honey, darling, son, mommy and daddy have to go to work tomorrow, and you're a big boy, you can handle this, it’s just a dream, just lie in bed and think of happy things. Good night." And they closed the door in your face.

When your brother came, the nightmares only intensified, only this time he was always in them. Sometimes your brain would replay the first moments you spent alone with him, and the terrifying thrill in your blood would remain for hours after you woke up. Other times, you dreamed that you were older. Your brother looked different, but you still knew it was him, somehow. It started off benign enough, with you and your brother walking together, sitting beside each other and enjoying the sunlight and soft breezes.

It always ended the same way. Your brother, lying dead beneath you, his blood all over your hands. Every detail was seared into your brain—the blood and tears drying on his face, sightless eyes still pleading for mercy that never came, and your hands, _your hands._

For months after these dreams began, you washed your hands obsessively, to the point where you would get up abruptly halfway through every single dinner with clock-like precision to make a sprint for the bathroom sink. Your hands were red and raw, aching and dry from your fervent attempts to scrub away the stains no one else could see. You couldn't stand it.

It was years before you could stand to look your brother in the eye, let alone feel even mildly comfortable being in the same room as him. You wouldn't be able to explain yourself if anyone asked. They would call you crazy, and possibly refer you to a licensed professional, or move you away from your brother altogether. Maybe that would be better. You can't stand thinking about what you could do to him, what you _have_ done to him.

But you can't stay away from him. He draws you to him, and you can't bring yourself to resist when he calls you. He trusts you. He _loves_ you. He comes in at night when you've woken yourself up sobbing, and silently, wordlessly, slips beneath the covers and embraces you. He falls asleep next to you, breathing softly and evenly as you recover. You want to reach out to him and touch his sleeping face, or stroke his hair, or trail your fingers down to his throat, or wrap your hands around his neck and press until—

You don't. Shaking, you push the covers off of yourself, walk to the bathroom, and turn on the faucet.

\--

You’d been expecting this, though you don’t know why. Your parents were convinced it would be a girl, picking out a name for their imaginary daughter and decorating the room in white lace to prepare for “her” arrival months in advance. But you always knew.

The baby lies nestled in blankets, quiet and still. Your new little brother. Pushing some of the covers aside to get a better look, you brush your pale fingers gently, hesitantly against his new, pink skin.

He’s beautiful. The blankets frame his sleeping face, and in that moment it’s as if you’re looking into the face of an angel, pure and flawless. It sinks into your brain like lead, seeping poison all the way down into the pit of your stomach where it settles uncomfortably. Perfect. Flawless. Immaculate.

Your heart is racing, and you feel like you’ve remembered something important, but it’s slipping away. Your eyes dart wildly around the room for something, _anything._ There’s a pillow on the floor. You pick it up, and your hands aren’t shaking at all. You feel every ridge and bump on the pillow against your fingers.

You could do it. You could end it now. No one would hear. No one would know. You’re not thinking (straight). Your hands move by themselves, as if you’ve already become intimately familiar with murder. You’re centimeters away from fratricide when he stirs, almost imperceptibly, breathes, goes back to sleep. You exhale. Inhale. The pillow drops from your hands and you scream.

You are seven years old.

\--

In spite of everything, you live to a ripe old age. Your children and wife left you long ago in a city called after your very own son, but you lived on, and only after many many years of wandering is your body finally starting to shut down. You die alone, closing your eyes in exhaustion as you sink to the ground miles out of the nearest settlement. As everything begins to go fuzzy, all you can think is that you’re glad it’s finally over.

The next thing you’re conscious of is that you’re lying on a hard dirt floor, drenched in a cold sweat. You’ve just lived 9 years as a girl named Zillah and it’s a very strange sensation trying to reconcile your memories of this life with those of the past one. Your head aches as you stretch, flex your tiny, slender fingers. This body feels all of a sudden very strange, even though you’ve been living in it without a problem for the last 9 years. It’s all very, very strange. And there’s really only one person who could be responsible for it.

Sighing, you get up and brush yourself off. You’re in pain and very tired but you can hear your father calling you from outside and you don’t relish the idea of getting beaten for acting like a layabout. It seems you’ve got a long while ahead of you before you’ll be able to rest.

\--

You can’t bear this anymore. He told you no one would kill you, but you’re starting to wonder if maybe you’d rather just die than deal with this for even one more day. Suicide is a sin, of course, but what’s one more black spot on your record? God is no longer any friend of yours, as you’ve become fond of saying.

You wandered for years in isolation, loathing the knowing gazes they cast upon you. Once they laid eyes on your cursed form, they could see all the way through you to your soul, down to the deepest recesses of your sin. You are naked before them.

Their eyes follow you still (ungrateful wretches, you _built_ this city), and even your wife and child watch you when they think you can’t see (your wife and child that you spent your whole life trying to please, that you toiled day in and day out for so they could have a good life—but you’ve long since abandoned the idea of ever getting a sliver of credit for anything you do). As far as everyone else is concerned, you don’t have a name. They speak of you in hushed whispers, _look, there’s the murderer coming out of his house, see the murderer there, laying bricks, the murderer was out late again last night, what do you think he was doing?_

Justifying yourself to them, you’ve realized, is an exercise in frustration and not worth your time. No one understands you because no one wants to. They look in your eyes and see the murderer, and that’s all they ever want to see. Put you in a neat little box and lock you away inside their heads, your entire being defined by one action. No one wants to sympathize with the murderer, not even your family. They’re afraid. They’ve seen the mark, and they know your curse. No one wants to end up like you.

(or worse, like your brother)

\--

Your brother laughs as you push him down onto the ground. The grass tickles your nose as he pulls you down next to him, and you almost sneeze. He laughs again, and you can’t help but smile when you see his grinning face. You never can. You love him, and you will never stop loving him, in spite of everything. He never did anything to hurt you, after all. But something has to give.

He doesn’t stop laughing when you climb on top of him and rest your hands on his neck. Why should he? He doesn’t know. He could never know that you’ve been planning this for months, years, even, that this is what you’ve been waiting for. All he does is smile and say, “brother, what are you doing now?”

And you almost stop. You almost reconsider. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, there’s still time to stop and go home and return to your life. _I’m sorry,_ you almost say, _let’s go back, mother and father are waiting for us... waiting for_ you, _really,_ you think, reconsidering, _they’re probably worried about you, wondering where you are (because why would they care about me)_

The words die on your lips. Your grip tightens around your brother’s throat as you remember why you’re here. You can’t live with him. Long fingers, calloused from years of working crops (years of working so _hard_ while he lives a blessed life, how dare he act like nothing’s wrong, everything’s wrong, why can’t it be _me_ , what did he ever do to deserve this special treatment) press into his pliant skin, and his eyes widen. He makes an appropriately choked sound and begins to struggle.

Finally.

\--

_And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. And Cain said unto the Lord,_

_My punishment is greater than I can bear._


End file.
